


the color of your eyes

by Areiton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Peter Hale, Alternate Season/Series 01, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Consensual, First Kiss, Getting Together, Incest, M/M, POV Multiple, Warning: Kate Argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 02:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15500301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: Stiles learned early not to talk about what he can’t See.He doesn’t see blue and that’s ok, because his mate will have pretty blue eyes. And he doesn’t see red, but that--that’s impossible, because no one has red eyes.





	the color of your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Three things:  
> 1\. Soulmates AU as you'll see.  
> 2\. Interfamily soulmates aren't taboo because it's my world and I said so.  
> 3\. This has been a WIP since fucking APRIL, it almost killed me I don't want to look at it anymore.

Stiles learned early not to talk about what he can’t See.

Blue--blue is easy. His mother laughs when he asks why the walls are the slate gray, giggles and says his mate will have pretty blue eyes.

But when he looks at stop lights and stop signs and Lydia Martin’s pretty hair and sees slate gray--he doesn’t talk about that.

He doesn’t tell Scott. He doesn’t tell his teachers. He learns to use the slate gray crayons and only slips up once, only sees worry flash in Mama’s eyes once before he remembers to be careful, to read the crayon, to look for the slight difference in tone.

He doesn’t see blue and that’s ok, because his mate will have pretty blue eyes. And he doesn’t see red, but that--that’s impossible, because no one _has_ red eyes.

~*~

Peter never tells a soul, what his Color is. Talia snarls and snaps for years, but he smiles and distracts her, teases her over the hues of green she can’t see yet, and never mentions that he can’t see the shades of the forest they run through, the water they swim in the, sky arching overhead.

He stares at it a lot, that slate gray sky and wonders if it’s as pretty as he thinks it is.

If it’s as pretty as the blue he knows his mate’s eyes will be. He picks at the brown earth and the dark brown trees and wonders why he’s different.

He knows the rules. That you see all the colors of the rainbow, every brilliant hue and shade, except the color of your soulmate’s eyes.

It’s how you _know_ when you’ve finally found them.

But he doesn’t see blue and he doesn’t see brown and he doesn’t _understand_.

And he never does see them.

Talia meets her Andrew, and the world comes alive in green and red, for both of them, and he smiles, happy and bitter both, because he yearns for that, the wolf in him is desperate for it.

He sleeps around and ignores his sister’s disapproving look, takes Chris Argent’s virginity at a basketball game and stares into his slate gray eyes, pupils blown and desperate, and thinks, maybe he’s wrong.

Maybe he’s broken.

And then he holds his nephew, a silent infant in his arms, and he can _See_ the blue of Derek’s blanket, can see the shades of it in the midwife’s tattoo, in his dark blue jeans.

He can _See_ and he can’t look away from his nephew, tiny and young and perfect and his.

~*~

Derek can see the color red.

He’s always been able to, so he doesn’t think anything of it.

Brown though.

He _can’t_ See that and it’s infuriating.

He watches Paige--slate gray hair, slate gray eyes, small gentle smile--and he wants her, wants her to be his, wants it to be the color he’s been looking for his whole life.

Laura Saw her color when she was fifteen, a violent cascade of starling blue at the ice cream parlor, when she bumped into a kid Derek went to school with. She and Jordan had been inseparable ever since.

It’s hard, being the only one without a soulmate, the only one who still sees shades of slate gray.

He sleeps with Paige, and Peter coaxes him into giving her the Bite, and as she bleeds out red and black in the root cellar, he thinks maybe it’s better.

Maybe not being able to see color is better, because he can’t see the light draining from her eyes.

It’s all just _gray._

~*~

After his mom dies, the color kind of seeps out of their house.

She’s the one who brought it to life, brought in twinkling lights and vibrant flowers and garish paintings that his dad would laugh at.

Now, those all are mocking, empty echoes of where she should be and it hurts him, so he takes them down, strips the walls and the lights and the flowers, and leaves only shadow cobwebs and dust in his wake.

His dad doesn’t thank him, but he looks less haunted and that’s enough.

Sometimes, Stiles wishes his soulmate were here, that he could see _all_ the colors that were dripping out of his life like blood.

He’s lonely, and doesn’t say a word, because his father is heartbroken and that is so much more important than Stiles being _lonely_.

He sits in the station, sometimes, and stares at the gray concrete ground and wonders if the world will ever be colorful again.

Sometimes he really wishes it wouldn’t.

~*~

He travels. For longer than he wants, and not nearly long enough. He goes to school in London and a pretty girl with pretty blue eyes and a devious mind falls in love with him. He lets her, even marries her and totes her back to the pack, but it doesn’t help.

He Sees blue and Derek, and slate gray that almost mocks him.

Derek kills Paige in the root cellar and his eyes glow blue and the world that’s always hovered on the edge of _wrong_ rights itself, settles in his chest like, _oh. There. That._

He goes home, to his pretty wife and asks her, “What color do you See when you look at me?”

She’s quiet because this has never been asked, not in the ten years they have been together, and she sighs. “Gray.”

Peter nods and she looks at him, curious. “Did you find--”

He thinks of Derek, lost and lonely and bitter, and still looking at slate gray world, and shakes his head.

“Not yet.”

She moves out the next day, and within six months, he’s divorced and Derek--

He is losing Derek.

~*~

Derek knows that Kate Argent isn’t his. She’s doesn’t have a single speck of gray, is all blonde and blue and creamy gold and _sharp_ , cuttingly sharp.

He knows she isn’t his, but she’s _there_ and beautiful and he fucks her and answers, sleep slurred, sex stupid, her innocent questions.

It doesn’t mean anything. She isn’t his. She’s a fucking distraction, and not even a good one at that.

Until he wakes up howling, listening to the screams of his family. He feels his pack bonds snapping, fraying, feels them shattering around him, and he screams as his family burns.

Laura is there, catching him, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight, terrified.

Then she shudders, convulses and--

The world tips, sideways and unsure, fucking upends on itself as everything vibrant and red goes slate gray.

He stares, shocked and uncomprehending, as Laura’s eyes flash, slate gray, as she convulses with power, and--

He screams, and screams, and screams.

~*~

Stiles talks, a lot, about the color red.

He talks about Lydia’s eyes and her lipstick, about the flashing lights at the station. He talks about red lights while they’re driving, about red sauce when he’s cooking, about fucking Superman and his goddamn red and blue suit.

He talks about red a lot, and no one ever notices, that he can’t see it.

He _can_ see the bobbing flash of his father’s flashlights, the teeth of the barking police dogs and he thinks maybe this was a bad idea, dragging Scott into the woods.

It is.

It’s the worst idea.

And it’s the worst idea that keeps on giving, because now he’s standing in leaves and a slate gray sky clear above them, searching for an inhaler that should stand out--the damn thing is slate gray against leave, for god’s sake--and then there’s a voice, rough and angry and frightened, barking at them.

Stiles looks up and--

Blue.

Jesus fucking christ, _blue_ . He stands there, staring at the guy--he knows him, knows him from his dad’s files, that’s Derek _Hale_ \--while Scott tries to explain.

Derek looks, for just a moment, as startled as Stiles feels, and then he’s walking away, bristling and furious and Stiles wants to stare at his eyes, eyes that aren’t blue, eyes that unlocked _color_.

That’s his fucking soulmate, walking away from him with his enigmatic hazel eyes and nothing makes any sense at all.

~*~

He doesn’t understand.

But nothing has made sense since his family burned and the world slipped into slate gray and misery. He didn’t tell Laura and she packed them up before the fires were even out, and drove. It took them almost a year, months spent in the wild fighting for control, months spent shaking any trail they might have laid, months spent grieving--before they landed in New York and Laura decided it was big enough, safe enough.

She changed her name and never called Jordan, and told Derek, “We’re starting over.”

Derek nodded and didn’t tell her that he couldn’t see the color of her eyes, or the red of her dress when she went out, or the lipstick on his dick when he slept his way through bar after bar after bar.

He couldn’t see anything but gray and after a while, he didn’t even see that, just a endless blur.

But then Laura--she woke up and her world was gray again.

She shivered and shook for days, refusing to talk to him, and that was ok. He didn’t mind letting her grieve her soulmate. Hell, he’d been grieving his for almost six years.

She left him there, alone in New York and it was only when he felt the alpha bond between them shattering that he realized where she was going.

And now he’s here, standing in the preserve, still able to smell the fire that killed his family--even logic tells him that’s a mirage, a phantom sense, it’s _not real--_ and snarling at two boys.

One smells of werewolf, of blood and new bites and still turning.

The other--

He looks up and Derek can _See._

It’s fucking terrifying and he can see the panic and hope in the boy, in his golden brown eyes.

Derek runs away.

~*~

Scott hates Derek, hates that Allison is scared of him and that he glares and broods and is a generally unhelpful bundle of mainpain wrapped up in a _really_ attractive package.

He bitches, loudly and often.

Stiles--Stiles is still trying to figure out how a dude with eyes every fucking color under the sun has made the sky blue.

It isn’t the most pressing question.

Derek avoids him, until Stiles corners him in the back of his dad’s squad car, and for a moment, staring, he has no fucking clue what to say.

“You’re mine,” he breathes, finally, and Derek’s expression tightens.

Something twists in his gut. “What--what’s happening to Scott?”

“You already know, Stiles,” Derek says, and he sounds so damn _tired_.

Stiles wants to fix it, wants to ease that exhaustion. “Why can I See blue?” Stiles whispers because he doesn’t understand and Derek--Derek is looking at him, expression conflicted and longing, and he sighs.

His eyes flare blue, a brilliant electric blue and Stiles shudders.

“Help Scott,” Derek orders and he nods, just before his dad hauls him out of the car.

~*~

When the Sheriff releases him--after hours of questions and coffee that smelt burnt and listening to deputies talk about him killing his sister--he goes to Stiles’ house

He knows better. His soulmate is a child, a boy who shouldn’t be dragged into his mess. Scott, already bitter and angry, will lose his shit if Derek touches his brother.

But the boy is _his_ , and he smelled like safety and warmth, sitting in the cruiser.

He sits on the roof, staring at the stars overhead while the night spins out, and Stiles’ heartbeat eases into sleep.

Then he goes hunting the alpha.

~*~

Derek is bleeding in his car and even Stiles knows that blood shouldn’t be that color. Blood runs slate-gray and he doesn’t understand why it’s _black_ right now.

“Stiles,” he gasps and Stiles looks at him. It’s been hours and Scott still hasn’t shown up with the damn bullet and his soulmate is going to _die,_ because Scott McCall wants to get laid. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Fuck you, Derek,” Stiles chokes out, “you’re not going to. I won’t let you.”

Derek’s lips are tight, his expression pained, and there is black blood at the corner of his mouth. But he smiles, and his gaze is almost fond.

It doesn’t matter--Scott shows up and Derek’s ok.

Derek is ok.

~*~

Going to the sheriff’s house when he’s being hunted by the same sheriff is the stupidest thing he’s ever done, and he fucked Kate Argent.

But Stiles is eager to help and he can’t force himself away, not when he can feel the alpha closing in on them, not when he still sees red in shades of gray.

He goes to Stiles, and Stiles--

Stiles is snark and sass. He teases and pokes, pushes back when Derek tries to press him into the wall, grins like he knows a secret and Derek hasn’t gotten a clue yet.

He’s _perfect_.

They’re driving to the hospital, and Derek looks at him. His fingers are drumming against the steering wheel, a smile on his lips, his face washed in gray light from the brakes on the car in front of them.

“I had a mate, before,” he blurts out and Stiles glances over at him.

His smile is soft, warm. Understanding and that makes no fucking sense. “They have red eyes, don’t they?”

Derek stares, his heart pounding and Stiles nods, like he hasn’t just knocked Derek on his ass. “I thought so.”

~*~

Stiles peeks into Peter Hale’s empty hospital room, and Derek is talking in his ear, and nothing makes sense, nothing except Derek’s panicked order to get out. He stumbles back a step and looks up.

The hospital is all blue and gray and it’s only when Stiles looks back at the nurse that he realizes.

Her hair is red.

Her hair is _red_ and Peter is staring at him in awe and hunger.

Derek is there, snarling, shoving Stiles behind him, before he goes still.

His voice is very small when he says, “Uncle Peter?”

Peter--he smiles, and it stretches the scars on his face, just a little, and he looks so pleased, Stiles feels an inappropriate giggle burning in his throat.

“Well. This changes things.”

~*~

He always knew Derek was his.

He stayed away, even as he Saw all the shades of blue.

Sometimes, when his mind raged in fury and pain, he remembered that, remembered _Derek._ Remembered that someone with brown eyes was still waiting.

It was a weight keeping him human and as the years ran on, endless fire and pain, it became part of the fury.

But now they're _here,_ both of them, and he can see the way that Stiles is pressed against Derek, peering at him while Derek stares in shock, and they move together easily, comfortable in each other’s space.

He wants that, wants _them._

And Derek is staring at him, hurt and hopeful and confused. “I don't understand.”

“There is a lot I haven't told you,” Peter admits and Stiles snorts, earning an exasperated glare from Derek.

He studies Stiles from the corner of his eye, all pale skin and pink mouth and big, doelike brown eyes. He smells like Derek, and Peter wonders how long they’ve been with each other, how much he’s missed.

“Your--you’re the alpha,” Derek breathes, and Peter’s attention snaps back to his nephew.

“Ah. Yes. About that.”

He hears Stiles shout, a split second before Derek snarls and lunges at him.

~*~

The world looks different, in color.

He likes it.

He doesn’t like the blood seeping from Derek’s side and the way his eyes are glowing, he doesn’t like the desperate way he clutches at Stiles’ arm, refusing to let him move away. Even now that Peter has vanished, Derek is furious and keeping him close.

“How--how did you not know he was your soulmate?” Stiles asks.

“I’ve always seen red,” Derek murmurs.

“Because you’ve always known your mate,” Stiles says. “And then--”

“During the fire. I didn’t see him after that, but red went gray, during the fire.” He shudders, realizing how close they came to losing Peter, and even knowing that Laura’s blood is on his hands--he doesn’t regret that Peter lived.

He doesn’t wish him dead, because it makes _sense_ now, Peter’s possessive affection, the way he would vanish sometimes, the way he hated Paige. How he was so dismissive of the other children and smoothering in his attention to Derek.

Stiles kneels in front of him. “Do you want him?”

He does.

He hates himself for it.

But he does.

~*~

Stiles is used to lying, to hiding what the rest of the world won’t always understand or allow. He got good at it, hiding his second Color. After his mom died and his dad fell into a bottle, hiding things, lying about how bad home was became essential, not just convenient.

Now that werewolves are a reality, it’s as easy as breathing, lying to his father, lying to his teachers, lying to himself.

He doesn’t tell Scott about his soulmates, and he doesn’t tell Derek, when he slips away from school, and into the woods.

It doesn’t take long for Peter to find him.

“It’s dangerous, for you to be here,” Peter says, idly.

Stiles shrugs. “Are you going to hurt me? I’m your soulmate, Peter. _Could_ you hurt me?”

A smile tugs at his lips but Peter just eyes him. “You’re an annoying little shit, aren’t you?”

Stiles nods, happily and then sits down, crossing his legs. “Tell me everything.”

Something crosses his expression and he does.

~*~

His boy listens.

Peter isn’t sure why that surprises him, maybe because he can feel the fear and fury in the thin pack bond he shares with Derek. Maybe because Derek _didn’t_ listen, only attacked, furious and hurt.

Maybe because for six years, he has been silently screaming and no one ever listened.

Stiles does.

So Peter tells him. About being young and lonely and realizing his infant nephew was his soulmate. Of leaving when he was nineteen and Derek was still lanky and carrying baby fat, of marrying a woman he could never love and coming home, and falling in love with Derek.

He tells him about Derek’s first love and how jealous he was, how he arranged to have her Bitten, and how Derek’s grief drove him into Kate’s arms. He tells him about the fire, his pack bonds shattering and his heart stuttering and the brief, eternal black when he died. He tells him about waking up, and feeling nothing where his pack should be, and a gaping absence where his soulmate, where _Derek_ , should be.

He tells him about his years of stillness and madness, of being helpless and clinging to the slate grey and shining blue and how he longed for them.

He tells him about his thirst for vengeance, the way he slowly began to heal and the nurse who would help him, who dreamt she loved him and would give him anything for a kind word.

He tells his quiet, watchful boy about killing, methodically working through each and every person who helped Kate, and finding Laura in the woods, attacking her before he could stop and think, before he could remember that she was his niece, that she was _Derek’s._

He tells him everything, until his voice is hoarse and his throat is sore and he is shaking, a fine tremble in his hands while he wants for Stiles to respond.

Stiles sighs and stands, brushing leaves off his ass and says, “Derek is pissed. But I get it. And I think he will, too.”

Peter blinks at him and Stiles frowns. “But, Peter--you have to stop. After Kate, you _have_ to stop.”

“After Kate, there is nothing left,” he says, hoarse and honest.

Stiles nods and then shifts, nervous for the first time. “And--what. What about me? I know you loved Derek. But--you--there wasn’t a lot of looking to the future in there, big bad.”

Peter blinks. “I love Derek,” he says, like it’s obvious. It _is_ obvious. “And I love you. I want everything, Stiles. From both of you. I want everything you’ll give me and everything I can take.”

Stiles stares at him, and his breath is shaky but relieved as he nods.

“Ok. Ok. So. How are we going to kill Kate?”

Peter stares at him, at his golden brown gaze, steady and expectant and he smiles.

His boy is _magnificent._

~*~

Stiles comes home late, and he smells of dirt and Peter, and it makes Derek anxious, makes him want to rub against the boy and cover him in his scent, mix it in with Peter’s until they’re so intertwined they can’t ever be seperated.

Stiles doesn’t look surprised to see him, or when Derek says, flat, “You saw him.”

“We’ve been hunting the alpha for weeks, Derek. Of course I saw him.”

“That’s not _why,”_ Derek snaps and Stiles’ gaze narrows.

“Yeah, well, so fucking what? He’s my soulmate, and I wanted to have a fucking conversation. I get to do that. You had him for sixteen years!”

Derek flinches, and Stiles drops onto the bed, like his strings have been cut, rubbing his face.

“I didn’t know he was mine,” Derek says, his voice low and raw and honest.

“I know, Der. I just--I know you’re pissed. But he’s not doing anything I wouldn’t do, if I were in his shoes.”

“He killed _Laura,”_ Derek snarls.

“Not on purpose. He would never do that to you on purpose. You _know_ he wouldn’t.”

The thing is--he does know. Peter was his favorite--there was nothing Peter wouldn’t do for him, wouldn’t give him, something that infuriated his sisters and mother, but that he basked in like it was his right. He’d never questioned it, his place in Peter’s affections, and it makes so much fucking sense now.

“Would you leave me to go to him?” Derek asks, the question that’s been sitting on the tip of his tongue since they first Saw Peter.

Stiles stares at him, and then curses, scrubs a hand over his short hair and clambers into his lap, pushing Derek back until he was satisfied, curled in his arms.

“No, you beautiful _idiot._ It’s not you or him. It’s never been your or him. I’ve known, my whole life that there were two amazing, gorgeous souls meant for mine, and it might make me a selfish little shit, but I swear to god, I’m going to find a way to keep you both.”

~*~

Derek sits on the roof, after Stiles falls asleep. He knows he should go, deal with his uncle who is still lurking in the dark--but he can’t bring himself to leave Stiles.

He isn’t terribly surprised, when Peter picks his way onto the roof and settles near him. He smells like ash and honey and burnt sugar, a scent Derek knows from every good memory in his childhood.

He can’t remember a time, growing up, that Peter wasn’t there for him. Even when he lived in London, he was only ever a phone call away. He _missed_ Peter, the long years in New York.

“I don’t know what to do,” he confesses and Peter shifts next to him.

“I know, darling. I don’t know either.”

Peter doesn’t touch him, and Derek doesn’t lean into him. But they sit there, for long hours, as their mate sleeps peacefully below.

~*~

Stiles helps.

Peter sleeps in his Jeep while he’s in school, Derek curled up in the seat opposite him, and it settles something anxious and pacing in his mind.

But it’s more than that, more than his brilliant young soulmate soothing the ragged edges of his sanity.

It’s that Stiles drags them home and feeds them, spreads information across his dining room table, and stares at him, never flinching as they calmly discuss murder.

It’s that Stiles is the one who finds Derek, when Kate takes him, and Peter is losing his mind in blind fury that she’s dared touch what is _his._

It’s that Stiles is the one who holds Derek, shields the werewolf as Scott shouts and snarls and Peter rips out the Argent bitch’s throat.

She drops to his feet, and it feels…

Anti-climactic.

Except that Stiles smells relieved, and Derek looks _lighter_ and maybe he’s blazed a trail to hell, getting here--but he has Stiles, smiling bright, and Derek, watching him cautiously, and that’s enough.

He has his vengeance, and his soulmates, and that is enough.

~*~

After... _after._ Stiles doesn’t see them.

Peter is found, wandering the woods, and Derek is given care of his uncle. The Hale house fire investigation is reopened, in light of Kate’s death and the plethora of evidence around her, and for a while, they’re both buried in the media shitstorm that comes from that. Peter vanishes from view for two months, and comes back smiling and unscarred, with tales of a fantastic plastic surgeon that makes John raise his eyes in blatant disbelief.

But they stay away from Stiles, and he--he tries very hard not to think about why. He helps Scott with his transformation and tells his Dad about the supernatural in Beacon Hills and doesn’t think about the color that splashes through his world, and the men he misses more than he can say.

It’s three months after the night in the woods, when he pushes open his bedroom door and finds Peter sitting at his desk, pursuing his porn of all fucking things.

“Boundaries,” Stiles almost shouts, shoving the door closed and snatching his computer away from the alpha.

Peter huffs a laugh, and turns in his chair to watch Stiles.

He busies himself putting his bag away, kicking out of his shoes, situating himself on the bed. Until he finally has no excuses to look anywhere else and he gives Peter his attention.

“You left.”

Peter’s nods, slowly and Stiles lets out a sigh. “Look, I--I don’t expect anything. I know I’m not what either of you wanted. I’m sorry, ok? That you got stuck with me. But you--”

“I left because I had to, darling. Not because I wanted to. And Derek didn’t go. But we agreed--we would court you when I returned. Not before, not alone.”

Stiles’ shuts his mouth with a snap. Blinks at him. “You--you want to court me?”

Peter is suddenly in his space, crowding into him and his breath is hot against his lips as he murmurs, “More than anything, sweetheart.”

Stiles whimpers and Peter kisses him, gently, like he’s precious and fragile, and held between Peter’s hands, he thinks maybe he is.

“I’m sorry you thought we didn’t want you, darling,” Peter murmurs against his lips and Stiles whimpers. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Stiles stares at him. “Promise?” he asks, voice tremulous.

Peter smiles, and it’s gentle and full of promises. “Promise, sweet boy.”

~*~

Derek slips into the apartment, while Stiles is sleeping, and he watches the boy for a long time, aware of his uncle at his back.

It should bother him, this man who was killed his sister, at his back, but it doesn’t.

He wants to lean into the warmth of Peter’s body, and let the older man hold him up.

“Did you always know?”

“Since I first held you, yes.”

“You never said,” Derek says, a tiny bit accusing.

“You deserved better than me,” Peter answer, his voice soft and Derek twists to stare at him.

“I didn’t want better. You were my best friend, Peter. I adored you.”

“And now?” Peter asks, carefully, eyes wary and hopeful.

Derek leans in and brushes a gentle kiss over his lips, and curls into him, sighing as Peter’s arms come around him.

“Come to bed,” Stiles mumbles from Peter’s pillows, and Peter laughs.

“We should listen to him,” he murmurs in Derek’s ear and Derek nods, and lets himself be led.

~*~

He wakes to glowing blue eyes and a wet mouth around his cock, sleepy whiskey brown eyes and deft fingers on his nipples, and a clever tongue licking the groan from his mouth, and he thinks to himself, _the world is better in color._

And, as he wraps a hand around Stiles cock, _we’ve lost too much time_.

And, as Derek presses a dry finger over his hole and Stiles whines, coming across Peter’s belly, _I want this. I want this, and them, always._

He doesn’t have to say it to know they agree. To know he's _home_. He sees it, reflected back in the color of their eyes.  


End file.
